Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?
With the recent public talk and growing awareness about marijuana and the failed policies against it, it occurred to me it would be interesting to get an idea of how many fellow programmers use marijuana and how it affects their work. I find it specially positive in my work, as an aid to better concentration and also greater creativity.
105 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadCannabis has been used for thousands of years as an aid to meditation in various Eastern cultures, e.g The Saddhu tradition in India.
Meditation has not only made me a better coder, but has really helped with my anxiety and depression.
I found this book most interesting:-
http://headstuffbooks.com/titles/cannabis_and_meditation
Also, to those here who beleive that it can't possibly help with creativity, try it, you will not be disappointed. I find it hard NOT to be creative on it, it's just that kind of drug. If you have too much or use it badly then obviously it's not going to help, but as long as you use it responsibly, it's a great drug for helping you get back on track on those days when thinking about coding is the last thing you want to do. It gives impetus, creativity, stamina, and in some cases, very strong objectivity about your output too.
Lurkio
I've heard about that weed book before - do you actually own a copy yourself? Any good? Or the other book on that link you gave, about meditation and creativity?
Lurkio
That said, I do very much enjoy it and have had some "breakthroughs" related to coding projects while high. Moderation is key, it can be great for helping you think about things differently, but if you overdo it, you can certainly do more harm than good.
I used to attribute it to activities that I'd be doing when I have the breakthrough... but I've realized, its not the activities. It's just enough time to process things differently.
Thanks for the clarification!
Use http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll to create a new poll.
That being said, I'm 100% sure that I'm far less productive after smoking pot, and I suspect that any reasonable measure of programmer productivity would show the same results for just about everyone.
But I'm also less productive after a few beers, or while watching a movie, or having sex, or eating dinner, or riding my bike. There's more to life than cranking out code. Marijuana feels good and is mostly harmless. Enjoy in moderation!
I have found that my productivity suffers when I lead a less balanced life. Since we programmers tend to fixate, it can be challenging to remember to take a break once in a while. Sometimes, if you don't over-indulge, the things that impair productivity can, in the long run, make your productivity more sustainable.
Or maybe I'm just rationalizing getting high and having fun ;)
Maybe it just takes more practice...
I know this sounds a bit too draconian, but didn't the last administration try to subpoena Google?
Getting a prescription is as easy as picking a doctor off a list, paying for an appointment, and saying, "I get headaches. Pot helps."
It's available, reasonably priced, and you can have it without being hassled by the authorities. As long as you're not a total idiot about it, it's pretty much just another alcohol. No one cares if you smoke pot on the weekends, as long as you do good work.
California does seem to have a culture of pot smoking for some reason.
I've known plenty of non-drug-using assholes. ;)
Acting on any of those things is a different story.
A thought experiment: suppose you were an alcoholic... would you admit it on HN? If not, why's that so? Is it illegal? Are you a politician? Maybe it's because of the social stigma associated with it. Well, guess what, not everyone shares the same values you do and in some more conservative circles, smoking pot would carry a stigma as well. That could harm you when looking for a job, for instance. I have seen that happening.
Maybe I am paranoid, but better safe than sorry, right?
I suppose they could get a search warrant for your place, but this is so exceedingly unlikely that it is not worth worrying about. Pot is technically illegal, but only the most flagrant displays of use are worth the government's time to prosecute. (And, it's decriminalized in many places now. Not everyone is in the US.)
For example, four friends of mine started a laser company after the dot-com crash in 2001. They needed $25 million of venture funding, and they got it. However, some (if not all) the VC firms hired private investigators to conduct a background check on my friends. The PI's researched and scrutinized their entire lives (both professional and personal). The PIs were so good at the job it was almost nauseating. Make no mistake about it, this kind of info can be used to find your weaknesses, and can be used against you. In fact, they used that info against my friends with devastating effects as soon as the company had some problems. It was not pretty.
(As another example, I have long hair. That means there are certain jobs that I probably couldn't get, as some companies have corporate policies against that. Do I care? No. I don't need those companies for anything.)
I would say that would have worked if you wanted to build a software company. This was early 2001, the entire Tech bubble had just collapsed. It isn't very easy to find venture capital when you need tens of millions of dollars to afford world-class lasers, electronics and clean rooms. The scale and ambition of the project constrain you because there aren't many sources of venture capital of that magnitude.
I don't have long hair, but I wouldn't want to work for a company who had a policy against it either. Such a policy would only make it clear that the company had the wrong values and priorities.
You need to look at this study carefully. Essentially, it says if you are a pothead, pot smoking isn't so bad for your cognitive skills. But, that isn't to say that the long term effects of pot didn't already impair you... it just means that once you are used to it, it doesn't hurt you to be smoking it.
The article makes perfect sense really. There is certainly such a thing as a "high-functioning alcoholic." That doesn't mean anyone can get drunk and work well, or that alcohol helps you work. It just means alcoholics have a tolerance.
URL: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v25/n5/full/1395716a.html
Besides, none of us are spiders. (Right?)
At higher doses, this would be overshadowed by the negative effects (leaping too far around the problem space, into nonsensical ideas, deleterous effects on memory and motivation.)
I presume an experienced user could differentiate, judge their own reactions and moderate accordingly. I don't believe I could.
Weed makes you think you're sharp and insightful, but it actually makes you really stupid and slow. You forget things constantly. Using before work is only interesting if your job is mind-numbingly dull.
Some more facts:
1. A single joint has about the effect of 4 glasses of alcohol, or 2-3 cups of coffee. But it's a downer instead of an upper, making you more relaxed.
2. Marijuana is the Spanish name used by advertisers against the use because it sounds more foreign and dangerous.
3. Propaganda in the 50s (as lobbied by alcohol producers) gave weed it's bad name.
PS: I live in the Netherlands
And apparantly the propaganda was in the 20s-30s.
I'm for legalization though. The idea of outlawing a weed that does less harm than alcohol is ludicrous.
I experimented a bit as a teenager. As I recall, it didn't help my analytical skills at all -- unless by analytical skills you mean finding doughnuts at 3am or being able to smile stupidly while listening to Led Zeppelin tunes.
I think intoxication is a natural state of mankind, so if you like toking or drinking or running until endorphins seep out of your ears I can understand that. I just don't think any of that, no matter how good it feels, actually makes you a better coder. If anything, I think good coders learn the natural rhythms of their bodies and minds, then maximize their performance based on that.
Now can it make you think you're a better coder? Sure thing, boss.
Anyone tried vaporators? Supposedly they heat the bud to the point of releasing essential oils into the air, but not to the point of ignition.
I wonder if any hardware hackers here have applied their skills to drug consumption? For instance, I know a guy who has produced ingenious contraptions for nitrous oxide delivery.
Or so I heard. Drug use is illegal and immoral. Or so I heard.
(In reality, I have not smoked for some time; it started to give me problems with muscle tension, so I laid off. Hooray for a total lack of physical addictiveness!)
I have the HerbalAIRE Vaporizer H2.1 (http://www.gotvape.com/store/herbalaire.vaporizer.php). You can set the temperature for (which it regulates), and it fills up a bag. It's not a Volcano, but its good enough (costed $250 vs the ~$600 Volcano). I built my own from a soldering iron before, but it just doesn't work as well as it took 10-15 minutes before it was ready, whereas this one takes about 3-5 minutes. Buying a good quality vaporizer is well worth the money vs making your own, unless you are skilled enough to make your own quality vaporizer (with proper temperature control).
Also, cooking it in oil/butter is also a healthier alternative (the healthiest alternative probably). I do that as well, but that's more for when I will be out in public where I can't use my vaporizer (really great for concerts for example). I generally cook the oil or butter into baked goods (brownies or chocolate chip cookies), or sometimes take spoonfuls of the oil straight.
The only problem with both of these methods is that you are committing to using a certain amount and its harder to regulate how high you get. With eating it, you don't feel it for an hour or so, so its sometimes hard to judge how much you need unless you've already tried a batch. With vaporizers, whatever you put into the vaporizer gets used up, and you can either waste it by not inhaling it all, or inhale it all which could lead to getting higher than you wanted to. With smoking its easier to regulate as you can just put it out or not toke again; or take your time between tokes.
As for actually using when coding, I do occasionally work on my personal projects after getting high; but this is more because I'm obsessed with coding and working on these projects more than purposefully getting high with the intentions of sitting down and coding.
I don't know if it improves my abilities, really, but it does make doing mundane tasks more tolerable. It allows me to focus and get lost in the problem. And also I sometimes do brainstorming and come up with ideas which I quickly note down before I forget. It makes my imagination start to think about the problems I am working on, which leads to actually having the motivation to try out what I'm imagining, hence why I often end up coding after I get high (though generally after I've come down a bit). The idea that pot de-motivates you is a myth in my opinion.
And yes, I created this account just to post in thread, and have a separate HN account for non-incriminating conversations :)
I don't smoke pot (I would try some, but I don't care enough to actually find someone who sells it), but I am sorely tempted to make a vaporizer and put the schematics online. Does it just need to maintain a constant temperature in a small area? That sounds like a pretty fun project. I imagine you could make a control system pretty easily with a few op-amps and a basic temperature sensor.
use a clear bulb though
While smoking, I have uncovered repressed memories of childhood, resolved interpersonal conflicts, and redesigned interfaces.
Calling a high person "stupid" is like calling someone stupid because they speak a different language, or calling a child stupid because they ask a question about something that seems trivial.
I've always felt that weed helps one reconcile disparate concepts. When you take off all your different hats and just look at the problem with a more basic human perspective, without the little compartments into which we organize all our issues. Of course, some people can achieve this level of perspective without drugs, more power to them. Similarly, some people react differently to marijuana - bummer for them. I smoke regularly, but not when I need to code - it's not that I can't code, it's just horrendously unappealing when high.
The bottom line is just knowing what helps you accomplish what and when to take part. I speak significantly better french with a little booze in me and I design better logos after a few hits. Some people are better designers and french speakers than me without ever having tried either.
I did once spend an afternoon making recordings of myself playing guitar at different levels of sobriety. Results pretty much as expected :->.
If you want good separation, find a metric that can be recorded/played back.
I thought we were hackers? There are obvious solutions here...
I don't smoke a lot of it, and quantifying the benefits that I receive from smoking marijuana is a bit difficult because they're rather abstract, and (at least for me), the effects of the plant vary from use to use. They don't vary widely, but there's a decent range of effects, which has a lot to do with the strain of the plant, but I digress.
When thinking about high-level design of a project that doesn't have anything put to code yet, I find that marijuana can help me visualize how things should fit together.
When doing exploratory programming at a REPL, I tend to try out more new things, put feelers out in a larger portion of the libraries of whatever language I'm using. I think this is objectively measurable - I may take a stab at it in the future, but I'm unable to right now.
When reading new things, or studying up on languages with unfamiliar paradigms, low doses of marijuana make it easier for me to snap my brain out of "language x" mode and into "new language y" mode.
When coding things in a language that I'm very familiar with, it makes it easier to get in "the zone". Not so much with languages that I don't already know like the back of my hand.
In general, I get a creativity boost from marijuana - and I'm fairly certain that it's more than a placebo.
Everything is not rosy though; If I smoke too much marijuana, my anti-social tendencies tend to be more pronounced. I'll have problems speaking casually with people, and my short-term memory will be shot.
I don't like smoking it with people who stare at the wall when they're high. It doesn't make me want to do that at all - it makes me want to do something creative right now. Play music, code, paint, something.
But yeah. I use marijuana in moderation. I know how I feel at different dosage levels, and I know what my limits are. I also know that a lot of people who use it turn it into more of a lifestyle than a part of a life, which is rarely a good thing to do with anything.
I don't drink caffeine (nor alcohol or any other types of drugs/stimulants).
It does a few things for me, chief among them is that it calms my ADHD and makes it easier to focus on things, specifically the mundane boilerplate shit.
My best designs/architecture have come from work sessions where I've been burning the midnight oil, to make a poor pun. I can't tell you why, other than the abstraction is infinitely easier to grok.
It does make me lazy though, but in someways there are benefits to that. For instance, I work hard to find easier ways to write code.
I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, but I grew up smoking weed. Also, quality plays a HUGE factor.
Moderation is key.
But you you smoke nearly every day.....
Blunts, bongs are overdoing it.
I'm a somewhat heavy bud smoker and a full-time developer. #define HEAVY? That's subjective, but I can comfortably go through a quarter ounce in a week, and my ideal consumption is probably 1.5 grams per day. I've known people who think a bowl a day is heavy and that an ounce a week is normal, so like I said, subjective.
I oscillate between stretches of daily smoking and stretches of sobriety. Clearly, there are advantages to being sober, and I wouldn't appreciate the benefits that ganja brings if it became too regular a habit.
I'm full of it, right? It's a pitiful escape, and an intoxicant couldn't possibly have any benefits, right? So allow me to enumerate them:
1. Ganja truly opens your mind. Now, we all have open minds, but there's a further degree of relaxation and openness that it helps one to achieve. This allows me to grasp very abstract concepts quickly because there are fewer preconceptions and other obstacles to learning. It would've taken me far longer to grasp functional programming, I believe, without this benefit.
2. Morale: After a night of boozin', you will feel like crap the next day. After a night of smoking, I feel like a million bucks in the morning. Granted, I've been an insomniac all my life, and ganja is prescribed in many places for this malady. I come in to work the next day refreshed and ready to dive into my work, and I'm undoubtedly more productive when this well-rested.
3. Energy/endurance: I don't always have the patience or energy for prolonged hackage, especially when it comes to things that once frustrated me, like setting up a dedicated server. When high, I can easily wade through the tasks at hand, and next thing I know, they're done. I often come home from work feeling drained, fire up a little bowl, and am re-energized. What just a minute ago seemed unthinkable (fatigued, firing up my computer to hack on something) becomes irresistable because it's one of my true passions.
So, ganja is very good for me. It may be terrible for others, so I don't offer any advice here. I have yet to encounter any ill effects thus far concerning my health, and it does _not_ at all affect my stamina in physical activity as would tobacco.
I never show up at work blazed, and only partake in my free time. And if you think that stoners are lazy, on top of this full-time job I run a web development business with three employees.
- 21 year-old
4. Concentration: distraction and lack of focus is the #1 killer of all good software projects. And I have seen that programmers, in my experience, have a natural talent to be distracted and lose focus. Who never lost a day on a combination of Reddit, Bloglines and Hacker News? I know I did. Of course you don't need marijuana to force yourself to attain focus, but the forces that drive me to work are usually negative ("If I don't deliver this, I won't get paid", "My rent is overdue", "I'll just finish Y so I'll have time to do work on X which is more interesting").
The state of mind marijuana gives me is the one of calmness and extreme relaxation, and as it's been observed, "Relaxation precedes perfect concentration" (http://tinyurl.com/6c632t). It's the bizarre kind of relaxation that you get when it's past midnight, you have to wake up early, and yet you can be completely focused at your code editor without worrying about ANYTHING, not worrying about the things you have to do before you go to bed, not worrying about the things you have to do the next day, not worrying about anything. That kind of focus is GOLDEN, and it has helped me write huge pieces of well written code in very little time.
I focus when I'm under pressure. For me, MJ would remove all that pressure, so I couldn't care less about code.
Different people, different results.
These days I can make an 1/8th (~3.4 grams) last a good +2 weeks.
Believe it or not though, my life long dream is to move to India, get in contact with a spiritual guru, and live in the now for as long as I can.
http://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1305109744
I hope we can eventually keep this in check.
Who made this Jeff person the thought police anyway? Does he have a rival site or something...?
Plenty of people on this site get all bent out of shape about copyright violation or ad-blockers, but obviously not illegal drug use, crude swearing, or pornography. If you're just going to shout "censorship!" and "thought police!" at anybody who thinks differently than you and get upvoted for it here, then I am also questioning the mission here.
So when I actually sit down to code something I designed prior to this, I won't use it, it makes me slow and narrows the attention scope, which makes me paranoid, which makes me go through my code a couple more times, and definitely more than needed to catch all the trivial bugs.